Finance Minister Michael Noonan has called on the Catholic Church to come out and back the children's referendum.Mr Noonan also said RTE and other broadcasters didn't need to come up with "bogeymen" on the No side to balance the debate.
The minister said Children's Minister Frances Fitzgerald had consultations with many interest groups and "has their confidence to the degree that they are backing this amendment".
"So far the Roman Catholic Church has been silent, and the other churches have not come out on it yet. I would like if the churches made a clear statement at an early date indicating that they favoured this referendum," he said.
Mr Noonan said RTE needed to distinguish between its set-piece debates and news coverage.
"In my view, the Supreme Court judgment is not intended to apply to news. "There is an entire area within news where RTE can help the public debate by presenting the facts and the issues, where it is not constrained by the judgment of the Supreme Court," he said.